The Grenning Gallery is pleased to unveil CARMODY | WHITE, an exhibition celebrating two classically trained painters who’ve redirected their skilled hands to soften, allowing them to dive into their curiosity about uncommon color associations found in nature, which now drive their compositions. This exhibit will hang from Saturday, May 24th, through Sunday, June 15th, 2025. Please join us for an Opening Reception on Saturday, May 24th from 5:30-7:00 pm, both artists will be present.
We are also pleased to see that after over 100 years of painting on Shelter Island, the White family will be honored with a museum show! The Shelter Island History Museum will be hosting Generations of Shelter Island Impressionists, an exhibition of paintings from our own Nelson H. White, his father Nelson C. White, and his grandfather Henry C. White. The exhibition opens Saturday, June 28th, and hangs through October 11th. The museum is located at 16 South Ferry Road on Shelter Island, NY.
Kelly Carmody (b. 1977, Massachusetts) continues to assert herself as ‘king of her canvas’ with her latest body of work. Rooted in realism, Carmody’s compositions start very traditional in subject and composition; however, she further removes her skilled hand by painting a single subject in multiple mediums and palettes and then using her sketches reference; Carmody’s new process has unearthed a unique point of view that feels both contemporary and harkens back to the studio’s of Henri Matisse, or Pierre Bonnard. Carmody has created a world that is beautiful, pleasant, and abundant. A sundrenched porch is adorned with pillow-tufted benches and a table of neatly arranged flora in vases. Plates of peaches are ready to be served, and books are plentiful.
Carmody’s paintings play with this tension between flatness and depth as she translates subject into sketch, sketch into painting, and painting into another painting. She often selects compositions with distant backgrounds, close foregrounds, and complex middle ground subject matter. The spaces are skillfully done, attributing a similar level of detail to each plane, yet remaining distinct with clear relationships. To achieve this level of cohesion in complexity speaks to Carmody’s restraint and skill for impressionism.
The women in Carmody’s paintings are pensive, often lost in thought, settled onto chairs near unfinished activities; an open book downfacing on her lap, arms crossed near a bowl of cut fruit, a butter knife left on an empty plate. Surrounded by a rich palette and soft light, the figures in these paintings have a relaxed, contented, contemplative ease that vibrates from the painting and into the space around them.
The composition for Pink Reflection began with the plein-air pastel drawing above which Carmody created sitting on the bridge at Dering Harbor, Shelter Island. In the pastel, we see a colorful sky with clouds scattering just after sunset. The horizon is intersected by masts from an assortment of sailboats. In the foreground, water runs out from beneath the bridge she sits upon, flowing into the harbor, the current accentuated by a simplistic design of little V shapes. As a poet does, when they go to write a line….Carmody translated this plein air sketch onto a canvas, she made decisions to omit a lot of what she saw on site. She emphasized the stillness of the harbor, where the pink sky casts a bright reflection onto the water’s surface. The sailboats intersecting the horizon were entirely omitted, heightening a sensation of peaceful contemplation. The movement in the foreground is only annotated by her echoing the pattern of arrows pointing us toward the direction of the water’s current. What started as a plein air pastel, sparked by an interesting light effect, resulted in a studio painting that emanates light itself.
Lifelong painter Nelson H. White (b. 1932, Connecticut) is widely appreciated for his loyalty to natural landscapes and intimate impressionism. His loose brushstrokes are skillfully applied, consistently capturing a quiet, relaxed atmosphere, whether that be on a beach in Italy or a view of the bay from Shelter Island. White communicates nature’s serenity through his spacious compositions and subtle details.
White uses impasto and texture to communicate atmosphere, which is unique to his work. In Dering Harbor 07.30.2022, the movement in the sky made by a palette knife translates to windy, overcast weather, a detail which might be lost on the viewer had the sky been rendered with smooth, consistent brushstrokes. Changes in his approach to painting reflect reality, time, and environment, allowing him to return to the same subjects again and again, finding a new painting every time. This skill is reflective of White’s deep presence with nature and ability to translate sense into image, something that is well earned after painting en plein air for over 70 years!
White also exhibits skillful restraint in his paintings, his experience as a seasoned painter allows him to decide how much detail a painting needs in order to express the true feeling of a scene. In The Red Umbrellas, his brushstrokes are precise, the distant forms of walking figures are distinct, the shadows of beach chairs inform us exactly of the suns position. In this painting, the texture of the paint is smooth and even, allowing the precise details of his subject to shine. Adversely, in The Road, Shelter Island, N.Y. 06.05.2024 White takes the opposite approach, abandoning strict detail for thicker paint, letting texture speak first, the full composition singing to subject, scene, and impression. It is for this intelligent handling of his subjects and paint that Nelson H. White has been a cherished artist for the Grenning Gallery since it's inception in 1997.
Nelson H. White has been painting professionally since the 1960s and studied with the world-famous Pietro Annigoni, after growing up in a family of painters. His father, Nelson C. White (1900 – 1989), and his grandfather, Henry C. White (1861-1952), both painted and are considered part of the Connecticut Impressionist School. His grandfather sailed over to Shelter Island in 1908 and bought a healthy tract of land on Menantic Creek and built a family “fishing homestead” on the water. While the whole family visits and paints on the property like their forefathers, the community is grateful that the White family has recently gifted most of the open space to the Community Preservation Fund.
